• Offer general methodological knowledge and skills that are valuable for a scientific career across different sub-disciplines of organization theory (e.g., on issues of research design and scholarly writing). In Amsterdam the workshop will keep the focus on different ways of performing qualitative research on organizations.
   
• Emphasize the importance of publications as a way of contributing to the academic community. Dialogues between journal editors and the workshop participants will offer insights into the intricacies of writing, reviewing, and publishing in international academic journal, as well as learning from both successful and unsuccessful experiences.
   
• Provide participants with a 'cosmopolitan navigator' for the ongoing developments in organization theory and the career opportunities in countries from Europe and other parts of the world. During the workshop activities, students from different geographical and disciplinary backgrounds will work together under the guidance of tutors, thereby broadening their knowledge base, exchanging experiences and building their network. Such exchanges allow benefiting from and bridging national differences in PhD training and careers in the field of organization studies.

The EGOS PhD workshop is NOT intended as a pre-conference event where PhD students present papers outside the colloquium. The place for PhD students to submit quality papers is the EGOS Colloquium itself, where the sub-themes offer opportunities for engaging in a range of scholarly conversations.


Content

The EGOS PhD workshop is a two-and-a-half-day event that precedes the annual EGOS Colloquium, which allows participating PhD students to take part in both the workshop and Colloquim. The program consists of two modules:

• The art and craft of publishing in academic journals

This module includes lectures by journal editors of leading academic journals, discussions and tutored group work on writing, reviewing, responding to reviewers and publishing journal articles. Among the topics covered are the academic journal article as a specific genre of a scholarly publication, identification and development of the main argument of an article, choosing the appropriate audience and journal for a specific topic, overcoming typical problems in writing an article, the role of editors, referees and authors in the process of publishing, other practical aspects of writing and publishing, experiences with publishing and how to review other colleagues' manuscripts.

• Qualitative methodological approaches to the study of organizations

This module involves presentations by senior researchers, discussion, and group work with tutors on the participants' PhD projects. Questions to be dealt with are: How to formulate appropriate research questions in qualitative research? What are the available methods for data collection and analysis? How can findings be reported in a rigorous and compelling way? What are the foundations for a high-quality qualitative research?

In addition to the two modules, the workshop will offer a panel discussion on life after the PhD, discussing issues such as the job market, postdoc opportunities, and careers in a range of settings, from business schools to research institutes.

The faculty involved in the PhD workshop will include scholars from a variety of disciplinary and geographical backgrounds, such as Tina Dacin (Queen's School of Business, Canada), Tom Elfring (Vrije University Amsterdam, the Netherlands), Steven Grover (University of Otago, New Zealand), Peer Fiss (University of Southern California, USA), Ann Langley (HEC Montréal, Canada), Vincent Mangematin (GEM and GAEL, France), Sigrid Quack (Max Planck Institute for the Studies of Societies, Germany), Kerstin Sahlin (Uppsala University, Sweden), Silviya Svejenova (ESADE Business School, Spain), Hari Tsoukas (ALBA, Greece & University of Warwick, UK), and David Wilson (Warwick Business School, UK).


Application

To be considered for participation in the EGOS PhD workshop, PhD students are requested to submit an application that includes a single document with the following two elements

1. A Letter of Application containing full details of name, address (mail, phone, fax and email), affiliation, year in the Doctoral Program, as well as a statement of why the applicant considers valuable to attend the workshop;
2. A 3-page Summary of the empirical part of the dissertation. The summary presents the research question and the research design, especially data collection methods, analysis to be performed, and the major challenges encountered in the research process. The PhD workshop is the place to discuss methodological issues in a practical way.

The Application should be submitted by January 13, 2008 through the EGOS website.

Please note that the Application to the EGOS PhD workshop must be submitted separately from application and registration for the EGOS Colloquium.

The selection of participants for the PhD workshop will consider the scientific potential of the PhD project as well as the need for specific advice and support, which the workshop could offer. Participants will be notified on acceptance to the EGOS PhD workshop by the end of February 2008. Given the participative nature of the workshop, the number of participants will be limited to 30.

Upon acceptance to the workshop and until May 31, 2008, participants will be given the opportunity to update their PhD project descriptions. Revisions, which are optional, and further inquiries concerning the PhD workshop should be sent to both Prof. Silviya Svejenova (silviya.svejenova@esade.edu) and Prof. Steven Grover (sgrover@business.otago.ac.nz).